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Guy Fiero - The Big One |
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After "solving" the IAC problem, the car actually became remarkably reliable. I put around 2,000 miles on the car without incident. It actually became so reliable that I decided to spring for some maintenance items that I had been putting off. The big one was a new air filter, as the old one had gotten filthy remarkably quickly. While waiting for my parts to arrive, I was playing with my faulty temperature gauge, and I accidentally knocked the oil dipstick loose. Weirdly enough, smoke started pouring out. I did what any reasonable person would do and promptly ignored this. The big problem came when I went to replace my air filter. I popped the cover off, and the entire housing was covered in oil. Not just a film of oil, I mean pools of oil in the air filter housing. This is not good. The smoke and the oil are both classic symptoms of blow-by. Blow-by is when air/fuel compressed by the piston leaks past the piston rings, and into the crankcase. This causes positive pressure in the crankcase, forcing the gasses and oil out of just about anywhere they can escape. Blow-by is usually the result of worn piston rings, which is an early sign of an engine on its way out. Obviously, this is repairable. It would mean a full engine rebuild, but anything can be fixed. However, this calls something very important into question. What should the fate of this car be? For days I toiled over what to do with the car. Should I just rebuild the engine? Maybe I do that engine swap after all. Or maybe, I just cut my losses and sell the car. The solution presented itself after about a week. I had to commute 2 ½ hours out of state for work. Because I had two other passengers with me, I had no choice but to bring Mr. Saturn. Apparently the break was what I needed, because when I came back and drove the car, the decision was immediately clear. I couldn't sell the car, and I definitely wanted to keep the Duke. Now, I do have to admit that I jumped the gun a bit here. I saw the symptoms of blow-by, but I never actually confirmed that it was the rings. To do this, we'll have to perform a compression test. A compression test is an easy way to get a pretty decent idea of the health of an engine. You screw a gauge into the spark plug hole, and crank the engine over. The gauge will measure how much compression the engine produces, and if the number is too low or inconsistent you know you have a problem. I started with cylinder #4. It measured about 120 psi, which isn't great but not abysmal for this engine. Cylinder #3 measured 60 psi. 60 psi is a very bad number. Not only is it way too low, but it's also way too far off from what cylinder #4 measured. Just to be sure, I re-ran the test, and this time it measured 90 psi. This is a bit confusing, but maybe it was just a fluke. I decided to move on to the other two cylinders. Cylinder #2 measured 120 psi again, which is good that it's in line with #4. Cylinder #1, however, measured 90 psi. So we have two decent cylinders and two iffy ones. Weird. Fortunately, there is a quick and easy test to narrow down the problem a bit. If we take one of our low cylinders and drop some oil into it, we can re-run the test, and if the number climbs then we know the issue is with the piston rings. If it stays the same, the issue is probably with the head. I chose to use cylinder #3 because it was easier. Performing the oil test, the number dropped back to 60 psi. The wet test should never make the number drop, so now I have no idea what's going on. At this point, I concluded that the engine must be haunted and should be rebuilt regardless. So at this point the engine is definitely coming out. Not only do I want to rebuild it, but there's a bunch of other work I want to take care of While I'm In There™. That doesn't mean our little engine is done working just yet though.
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